Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is communication between electronic devices as the name implies. While M2M communication means wired or wireless communication between electronic devices or communication between a human-controlled device and a machine in the broadest sense, these days M2M communication typically refers to wireless communication between electronic devices.
When the concept of M2M communication was introduced in the early 1990s, it was regarded merely as the concept of remote control or telematics and the market therefor was very limited. However, M2M communication has been rapidly developed and the M2M communication market has attracted much attention all over the world over the past few years. Especially, M2M communication has great influence in the fields of fleet management, remote monitoring of machines and facilities, smart metering for automatically measuring operating time of construction equipment and consumption of heat or electricity, etc. in the Point Of Sales (POS) market and security-related applications. It is expected that M2M communication will find various uses in conjunction with legacy mobile communication, very high-speed wireless Internet or Wireless Fidelity (WiFi), and low-output communication solutions such as ZigBee and thus will extend to Business to Customer (B2C) markets beyond Business-to-Business (B2B) markets.
In the era of M2M communication, every machine equipped with a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card can be managed and controlled remotely because it is possible to transmit data to and receive data from the machine. For example, M2M communication is applicable to a very broad range including numerous terminals and equipment such as a car, a truck, a train, a container, an automatic vending machine, a gas tank, etc.
Since an M2M device or MTC device may not frequently transmit and receive signals like a general UE or a Human Type Communication (HTC) terminal, a method for scheduling the MTC device to implement high communication throughput and efficient resource consumption is needed, and there is a need to inform the MTC device of this scheduling information. However, a method for scheduling the MTC device and a method for signaling this scheduling method have not yet been disclosed.